Environment
Voluntary carbon offsets often fail to deliver what they promise
Politics
ETH Zurich
Malte Toetzke calls for more ambitious standards in the voluntary carbon offset market. While this would lead to fewer projects getting funded, the benefit for the climate would be greater overall. 
Using drones to monitor rainforest biodiversity
Research
ETH Zurich
A team led by researchers from ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) advances to the finals of the XPRIZE Rainforest Competition. The international competition aims to promote the development of autonomous technologies for collecting data on biodiversity.
EPFL Carbon Team aims to capture CO2 with sieves and sponges
Teaching
EPFL
The team of students is working on a unique prototype that uses graphene membranes combined with a porous, sponge-like material to pull carbon from the atmosphere. The technology will soon be tested on an EPFL campus, with the captured CO2 used to produce carbonated water.
EPFL launched a pioneering project to detect pollen, dust and smoke
Research
EPFL
Since the start of this year, a suite of instruments has been hard at work detecting a broad spectrum of aerosols at the MeteoSwiss weather station in Payerne, in Vaud Canton. This pioneering project – a joint initiative between EPFL, the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology Climatology and European partners – aims to improve pollen forecasting and to gain further insights into the critical impact that bioaerosols, smoke and dust have on cloud formation and climate.
A new app to identify plants more precisely
Research
WSL
There are plenty of plant identification apps – but only few, that directly help research. The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL has enhanced the FlorApp of the Info Flora data centre with an image recognition tool, which makes identification easier and at the same time more precise.
Climate-neutral air travel: Is it possible?
Research
PSI
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and ETH Zurich have performed calculations to work out how air traffic could become climate-neutral by 2050. They conclude that simply replacing fossil aviation fuel with sustainable synthetic fuels will not be enough. Air traffic would also have to be reduced. 
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